(This is part of my journey going checking out Star Trek Judgment Rites. You can follow the entire series on the Retro Gaming page.)

Episode 5: Voids

The Enterprise is called to take over a survey mission in the Antares Rift, a section of space that’s a little too volatile to use warp engines. The ship takes a little damage but it’s no biggie…

…until it’s struck by time-space lighting. Then everyone freaks out.

The layout of the Enterprise’s bridge in Judgment Rites and 25th Anniversary bug me a little. Everything in it is shifted around from how it is in the show. For example, the turbolift doors are right behind Kirk’s chair here, but in the series it was more to his left. I guess we must make allowances for game design.

Anyway, an explosion from the lightning strike hits right near the bridge and cuts off the command crew from the rest of the ship — they can’t even leave without hitting hard vacuum. Spock beams out to do repairs, at which a small alien flashes in and then flashes out in his transporter wake. Um, that’s weird.

With Spock AWOL and McCoy somewhere else, Kirk pulls together a new team from the bridge crew and makes his way to auxiliary control. This marks the first time in both of these adventure games that the other principle characters (in this case, Chekov and Sulu) are used on a team and the first time that the Enterprise itself is the location of an episode. Bottle episode, no less!

I also learned here that Sulu was a physicist before he came on board the Enterprise. I either didn’t know that or totally forgot it.

Anyway, the four-armed alien is in auxiliary control and instantly ports Kirk and company away when they try to talk. Call me maybe?

Kirk gets a reading on the alien and brings it to McCoy, who says that it’s a Vurian — an alien race that supposedly went extinct a long time ago and doesn’t have the sort of powers this one seems to. Natually, McCoy suggests gassing it. That’s his solution to everything.

Upon being gassed, the Vurian teleports off of the ship and into another dimension entirely. Well that sounds like a vacation for Kirk, who hops in the magical teleporter for a trip to the Twilight Zone.

Spoiler alert: It’s not that nice of a place to visit.

The colored rocks on the ground elicit strange emotions from Kirk when he picks them up, from paranoia to overprotectiveness. Also, Ensign Walker shares a little about his love life. Good to know, Walker.

The alien behind all of this is the Savant, a creature of pure emotions that has jacked into the Vurian and Spock’s minds to make them feel joy instead of grief or a lack of emotions. Spock — who’s being force-fed the happy — says that the Savant is using telepathic creatures as a way to stabilize its emotions, provide more support.

Since the stones in this dimension are negative, cast-off emotions, Kirk gathers up a whole bunch of them in a pouch to toss them at the Savant. Catch!

The Savant is less than thrilled at having its artificial emotional high disrupted, so it lets Spock and everyone else go. Free will rules, the end.

Interesting episode, especially the bits on the Enterprise, but the overall story seems a little lacking. I think the Savant got off too easily considering that it was emotionally raping Spock and the alien, which made it doubly weird when McCoy was cracking wise at the end.